If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.

After three seasons of at least 22 home runs J.J. Hardy only hit 9 and not surprisingly had the lowest HR/FB of his career (5.6%). Offensive fluctuations have been apart of his game his entire career so it wasn’t totally unusual for the power to disappear. The big question is will the power come back in 2015?

First, he played the fewest number of games since 2011 because he missed a few games here and there with a few nagging injuries (mostly lower back), but never landed on the DL. Back injuries are troubling especially for a shortstop. Also, once someone starts to have back problems very rarely do they completely go away.

What’s strange about his batting average was it was relatively the same as the past years, but he achieved last year’s batting average with a much higher BABIP. Last year he hit a career low .188 on fly balls and a career best .333 on ground balls. It looks as though both numbers should regress back to his career norms so the batting average should be in the .260s.

In regards to the power, it should positively regress, but I think 22 is the ceiling rather than the floor. Creating arbitrary beginning and end points is never fully reliable, but it can provide a glimpse into what happened. From June 1 to the end of the season he had 9 home runs with a 8.7 HR/FB rate, which is close to the same rates he posted the past two seasons. Also, he hit 28 doubles, which is nearly identical to the number of doubles he hit the past three seasons.

I also believe there was also a human element to his low power numbers because I’m sure it must have been an anchor in his mind and probably snowballed which contributed to the delay of his first home run. It’s important to remember these players are human beings and this isn’t Strat-O-Matic.

My projection for Hardy is a .264 batting average with 16 home runs, 70 runs and RBIs (in 540 ABs).